Faith Sustained The World’s Best Athlete Through Years of Grinding Poverty
ITEN, Kenya — Mary Keitany is, by any measure, one of the finest athletes in the history of the world. She has held world records in the women’s marathon, women’s half marathon and women’s 10-mile, 20-kilometer and 25-kilometer road races.
She won the London Marathon in 2011, 2012 and 2017, and she won the New York City Marathon in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018. All seven of Keitany’s marathon wins came after she had children — five of them after her second pregnancy.
Mary Keitany poses with some of the professional photos taken of her at the finish lines of her marathon wins. Photo by Robert Carle.
Charles Koech, Mary Keitany and their daughter Samantha stand in front of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Iten, Kenya. Koech and Keitany also have a son, not pictured. Photo by Robert Carle.
Keitany, now 40, retired from running last year following a back injury. This has given her time to devote to her church family. On a sunny Sunday in May, Keitany stood amid fellow church goers who sat in a circle on blue and white plastic lawn chairs of a parishioner's home. She read a selection from the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke.
This home fellowship of St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church meets each week to read and discuss the lectionary readings for the upcoming week. While this may seem like unusual behavior for Catholic believers, it is common in Kenya. Protestant Pentecostal practices have left their mark on all Christian denominations in Kenya, including Catholic church life.
Keitany grew up in an impoverished Pentecostal household in a remote area of Baringo County, Kenya. Her parents were so poor that four of her six siblings had to live in neighboring houses, where there was food for them to eat. As a child, Keitany had to drag buckets of water two kilometers up a hill to her home. Keitany attended school 10 kilometers from her home, and she ran back and forth to school each day. As a child, Keitany never owned a comic book or saw a television set. Her heroes were characters from the Bible whom her parents had taught her about.
Listen to more of Mary Keitany’s story on the ReligionUnplugged.com podcast.
Keitany knew that she was a naturally gifted runner, but she had no way to pay for her school fees. When she was 15, she moved in with a couple who hired her to work as a maid and take care of their three children. Keitany’s life centered around cooking meals, washing clothes and dishes and taking care of kids.
“It was very hard work,” Keitany said, but the kids loved her, and she was able to give more than half of all her earnings to her mother.
Keitany’s father enrolled her in a 15 kilometer race. After this race, her sister’s sister-in-law recommended that she try to enroll in the National Hidden Talents Academy for impoverished and orphaned youth in the Karen district of Nairobi County.
“I was terrified to go back to school after two years of working,” Keitany said. “But I saw this as an opportunity that God had opened up. I knew that I had to trust God to give me strength to see me through.” At Hidden Talents, she became a full-time student athlete.
In 2006, after finishing secondary school, Keitany was encouraged by her mentor to pursue a running career. She moved to Iten, nicknamed “Home of the Champions,” to train. With an elevation of 8,000 feet, Iten has an ideal climate for training long-distance runners and a 40-year history of producing marathon winners and Olympic gold medalists.
In Iten, Keitany met Charles Koech, an elite Kenyan runner whose brother, Benson, had set the junior world record for the 800 meters run. Koech became Keitany’s training partner and coach, and in 2012, he became her husband. They have two children, Jared and Samantha.
Keitany and Koech believe that starting businesses serves Kenya’s social good by providing employment and generating wealth for the community. They own the 85-room Winstar Hotel in Eldoret and smaller hotels in Baringo and Iten. They have hired managers to help run these businesses.
The couple serves on the board of directors of Shoe4Africa Foundation, which has opened up the Mary Keitany Shoe4Africa school in Keitany’s hometown, Torokwonin, in Baringo County. Since Keitany had to drop out of school to become a housekeeper when she was a teenager, she wants to help children in her hometown avoid a similar fate.
Mary Keitany serves cake to children outside St. Joseph Catholic Church in Iten, Kenya. Photo by Robert Carle.
When the COVID-19 epidemic hit Kenya, Keitany and Koech decided that a remote area would be the best place for them and their kids to survive the pandemic. They have built a big, sprawling house outside of Iten, where they farm and tend chickens, cows and sheep.
After Keitany’s friend and training partner, Agnes Tirop, was murdered in Iten in October 2021 by her estranged husband, Keitany helped start the Agnes Tirop’s Angels Trust to combat gendered-based violence. Keitany was dismayed when a second female Kenyan runner, Damaris Muthee Mutua, was murdered by her male partner just six months after Tirop’s murder. The Tirop’s Angels Foundation plans on setting up a safe house for women fleeing from abuse.
“Women in abusive relationships must get the support they need to leave these relationships,” Keitany said. “Women have to know that they have rights, and they should never be silent when they face violence.”
Keitany also said that female athletes need to be taught to protect their assets so they are not taken advantage of by predatory agents and husbands.
Keitany and Koech are lay leaders in St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in Iten. On Sundays, they attend Mass and help lead Bible studies in home fellowship groups that meet after church. When they talk about the grinding poverty of their childhoods, both seem surprised by the successes that they have had in their lives.
“God can lift you from nothing to something,” Koech said.
“God did amazing things for me,” Keitany said. “God will not leave his children. He directs us. I am always thanking God so much.”
Robert Carle is a professor at The King’s College in Manhattan. Dr. Carle has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The American Interest, Religion Unplugged, Newsday, Society, Human Rights Review, The Public Discourse, Academic Questions, and Reason. Carle is reporting from Iten, Kenya.
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Mary Keitany, one of the world's top athletes, has retired from running to spend more time with her church family in Iten, Kenya. With world records in several road race categories, Keitany's incredible career began with humble beginnings.
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